


The Circle Game

by djiange



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Character Study, Illustrations, M/M, a bit dark? idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26752702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/djiange/pseuds/djiange
Summary: "Okay, c'mon." Merlin nods and leans in. "Make it worth, before we are doomed again."
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was about to have my umpteenth re-watch of Phantom Thread before I realized it had left Netflix, so this is my little nod to that masterpiece (which's really the most Merthur-ish story for me).

_We_ ' _re captive on the carousel of time_  
 _We can_ ' _t return_ , _we can only look behind_  
 _From where we came_  
 _And go round and round and round_  
 _In the circle game_

-

Merlin takes a sip of the lousy whisky someone sneaked into the school gym in a huge soda bottle, wondering why the girl from his English class, which he assumed, dragged him to this after-match party of a match he didn't even watch. He doesn't think he knows anyone here apart from that girl - or does he really know her? - and at the places where he does know people, he's known as the new kid who doesn't seem to want to know others.

In hindsight, this looks exactly like the kind of cliche from some coming-to-age John Hughes rip-offs on Netflix that tries too hard to be quirky. He should have guessed all the drama afterwards.

He is nothing close to coming-to-age, though.

Merlin walks out of the school building at a leisurely pace, leaving the young bodies radiating their energy on the floor. It is late August, even the balmy breeze smells painfully nostalgic. He breathes the melancholy of the end of the season like he did last summer or on the other strewn time nodes of which he has lost count.

He's only started this teenage life quite recently, kind of a long story, involving a train of misunderstandings with his landlady.

Freya believes it would be easier for him to be socially compatible with others if he could reincarnate and conform to a life cycle like a normal human being. Well, he doesn't understand what part is normal about a kid's brain full of memories that belong to another time and space flashing through his childhood, and clearly he wouldn't fit in despite all the efforts at pretence. At least unlike he used to.

He ignores Freya's suggestion anyway. After all, he'd eventually lose his mind either way, by adopting schizophrenia or a paralysed life spanning millennia. 

It's not like that Merlin doesn't have companies from time to time.

He met Gwaine on several occasions. Gwaine was one of the paladins once, fought at Patay seven hundred years later, and hummed _Lili Marlene_ on a gentle snowy night before drifting into a long, long dream. Gwaine always lived like they had never been apart despite no recollection of their history, and always stayed with him, for him, carrying around things more than one man's lifetime could ever. Merlin owes him too much.

And there was Morgana at the seventeenth-century New England. They were the last in the dim local pub besides the bartender when Morgana whispered without lifting her head from his shoulder. "Was it worth becoming one of them?"

Merlin rested his chin on the top of her head. "I'm not sure if I've been one of them."

Arthur has never showed up in the time flows, not even a glimpse. Or maybe Merlin has lost the point to try harder.

Sometimes Merlin almost forgets why he is still haunting around. 

The thing is that, technically, he is not immortal, yet death seems too diverting. The void is a forfeit he must pay. His cruelty and cowardice demand punishment, along with the sins of the lords he served and the evil of the monsters he created.

People today interpret his time as a stage of the savaged dark ages, his kingdom as a land of myth and magic appearing full of callous ignorance and ludicrous fear, unlike the enlightened, well-trimmed, binary-numeral-system-based modern world, in which they keep building the Tower of Babel, carving up the common future of humanity by their sophisticated civilisation resonating with the eerie uproar from the distant era.

Merlin was sentenced, by his own belated remorse or something equally petty, to witness this absurdity in the most comical sisyphean fashion - someone once asked him to always be _him_ \- like right now.

Listening to the waves of bass and drumbeats flood from the hall, Merlin sits down at the steps in front of the building, leaning against the cold marble on the side. The stars above, which probably died a billion years ago, cast their last glimmer through lightyears free of any way to backtrack.

Merlin taps a rhythm on the edge of his empty solo cup, and murmurs, "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me."

He says it in a way that sounds too nonchalant, as though he had nothing to lose. Or win, for that matter.

"Mind an audience for your little Shakespeare recitation?"

Ah, right, _that_. Perhaps there is still something.

Merlin shakes his head and smiles, a bit fondly. "Suit yourself, Eoin."

"Wow, so you know my name, eh? Lucky me."

This is the major motivation behind why he decided to settle with this new identity for a while, after he had spotted Gwaine - Eoin, for now - as he'd passed this seaside village in North Cornwall a few weeks ago. He hasn't come across any of them in about five decades since the gruelling sixties. Not very long for all he cares, but the encounter with Gwaine is hearteningly something he can console himself with until the cheer of cheap humour and easy nihilism die down again.

"You don't know mine?" Merlin teases.

"Well, I followed you here to work it out." Gwaine adds with his childish coyness, "Hope you don't find it too creepy."

Shaking his head, Merlin offers a hand. "I'm Merlin."

"Merlin." Gwaine repeats while he sits down, shoulder bumping into Merlin's, still having Merlin's hand in a pleasantly awkward hold.

His name curling on Gwaine's tongue, their joined warm palms, and the chummy 'Gwaine being Gwaine' schtick he pulls all send Merlin a sense of home and substantiality. They talk like they have known each other for lives. Gwaine is so genuine when he lets this comment slip that he looks a little caught off guard for saying something too cheesy. Merlin laughs.

Someone yells "Eoin!" from behind, demanding where the fuck Gwaine put his phone charger. Gwaine digs in his jeans pocket and pulls out the cable. Merlin shifts sideways a little to make more room between them, glancing at the hand grabbing the mess of wire from Gwaine, and -

"Merlin." The hand catches Merlin's wrist as he tries to run on impulse.

"You lads know each other, Princess?"

Merlin blinks.

"Leave us."

"Hey, a bit rude, isn't it?"

"It's fine, Eoin. Arth- We were... friends."

"So exes?"

"Can't you just sod off, Macken?"

"Jesus, do you get your knickers in a twist, James?"

"...Please."

They break off at Merlin's restrained plea.

"Alright, alright, since Merlin asked so nicely. And I'm such a good sport." Gwaine snorts, stands up and winks at Merlin. "You're friend with Janet, yes? I'll see you around, Merlin."

Merlin just nods, not looking at the direction where Gwaine exits from this little scene.

He always thought it was probably because he wouldn't recognize Arthur immediately that somehow he hadn't reconnected with Arthur all these years. _How silly._

Arthur looks both younger and older at the same time than Merlin has ever seen. He is in his school blazer, a few inches shorter, built not as strong yet and visibly boyish vulnerable. His expression, however, echoes Merlin's own. No one who sees him right now would mistake it for something else.

"Why were you running?" Arthur starts.

"I wasn't ready."

"Ready for what? A thousand years weren't enough?"

It's not supposed to be funny, but Merlin can't help a small chuckle inwardly. _Yeah, it is hell of a time._

"Ready for yesterday once more." He exhales. "God, it's been so long."

"I know."

Arthur lets go of Merlin's wrist. He sits down on the step where Gwaine was, and gestures for Merlin to follow his motion. Merlin doesn't run this time. He partly thinks that'd be pretty immature of him and partly has a feeling that Arthur would hunt him down if he did. There is no point to hide at the moment, anyway.

"You didn't have problems with Gwaine." Arthur starts again when Merlin seats himself next to him.

"It's different." Merlin doesn't mean to be provocative or distress Arthur with an implicit remark, but he can't quite put his finger on where they are standing.

The sight of Arthur draws something ancient out of him - not in the reassuring way Gwaine just did - things deeply embedded in his flesh and mind, flooring him with a sudden pang that makes him faint or freaked out or yearning. It's wistful, too intricate and prickly to return to.

"You remember everything?" Merlin wonders.

"Not everything, but enough."

"How did it happen? I mean, they all didn't, except for Morgana, but not spontaneously either."

"I dreamt a lot. Thought I was crazy. I asked Gwaine about this, he had no idea."

"How did you know it was real?"

"Some of the memories were just too disproportionate to be in line with reality - sometimes they were in languages I never learnt - and the emotions attached were too acute to be just hallucinations."

_Languages?_ "So you have...? Before this?"

"Yeah, a few times. I was wondering where had you been." Arthur doesn't move, but Merlin hears his wavering.

"I never die." Merlin sounds almost shy. "I'm sorry I didn't find you sooner."

"Would you have run if you had found me sooner?"

Merlin considers with a small pause, "I don't know. Yes, probably." 

He is somewhat bewildered by Arthur's subtle prodding. Arthur never pushed. Not that he was too discreet to disturb, he just seemingly didn't care that much.

"I gave up the hope that you would come back, centuries ago. At first I felt it would be easier this way, you know, no expectation no disappointment. And Then I figured it was better this way, to be separated like this."

"What made you think of that?" Arthur questions closely.

"I deserved it." Merlin waves his hand at the night sky. "The meaningless suffering, and whatnot."

"If you have to suffer, I do too. Why not do it together?"

"That's not how it works." Merlin snaps, but turns deflated instantly. "We can't go back to what we were."

"What were we?"

"We were lies."

"But now the truth has been told."

"You don't know me-"

"Then enlighten me, will you?" Arthur challenges.

Merlin leans back and rests on his elbows, trying not to see Arthur's face. Although he wasn't ready for this reunion, he had prepared for this speech for quite a while.

"When I was three, maybe three and a half, I used to torture butterflies with my magic, simply to see them lively and then not. I didn't know why I did it, I just did. And later I stopped because mum said it was bad, hurtful. Then I realised I was different - a freak, magic-wise or else - so I began to watch and learn how others did it, how others lived their lives. I managed well, and they started calling me that 'good little Merlin.'" He swallows, recalling the invisible constraint.  "I didn't have the nerve to tear off the 'good' label once it was stuck on me."

Merlin knows Arthur would understand that, for Arthur must have felt the same, having lived under the expectations and assumptions of others.

Arthur cocks his head slightly, face towards Merlin, seemingly knowing. But there is more. His gleaming, dark eyes bore through Merlin's, grasping every single fibre of Merlin's true being.

"So you kept playing your role - 'good little Merlin,' the hero - you saved me from the wicked."

His cool voice is awakening the numb sores, bringing them to their senses, which have been absent for so long that they have grown into grotesques, muttering for the impossible heal on the chafed soul.

"You made me dependent on you. Got under my skin, kneaded yourself into my life. You used me because you knew I wanted to be good. You watched me fail and struggle."

Part of Merlin wants to screech, to wail like the thousands of wronged souls whose tears and blood soaked through every inch of the soil in Camelot, that _it is so fucking unfair for you to say_ , _Arthur Pendragon_. 

It was _you_ , this damned tyrant who assumed his father's mantle of insanity, this man-child knight who indulged in his brittle little snow globe of sanctimony and conceit, insisting on responsibility and order, and fighting, and meanwhile skirting around the excruciating truths before him in favour of the perverse faiths behind him by virtue of not daring to loathe what had crowned him the very King Arthur of Camelot.

_You relied on me because you wanted to believe my lies_ , _my lies of reconciliation and peace. Because I was convenient, I was your shadow, because I would never escape._

Two can play this game.

But, _Yes._

Merlin closes his eyes, worn out with the vanity of indignation over their irremediable past, or - given the rawness of this moment, he quits the act - the gloss on his descent into blithe disregard, a heedless heart.

_Yes. I needed you to need me_ , _more than anything. I needed it more than my kin, my creed, my freedom. More than our unfulfilled love story, more than you yourself._

For all those years he stayed silent, he never doubted that Arthur trusted him with his whole heart since their early days; it was not _trust_ he wanted from Arthur, not really. There was a bit deep down inside him just so wretched, so ugly, secretly, ardently craving for Arthur reduced to mania as miserable as he was, whipped in a suicidal frenzy of excess, passing a life that didn't belong to himself, but to a slave to passion, a prisoner of what he just couldn't leave behind, couldn't let go.

Morgana called him out for his not willing to risk the disillusionment of a rendezvous. Gwaine only knew too well to ever ask.

The silence was a form of eloquence for him, or a prophecy in retrospection.

They were - they are meant to be like this, two sides of the same coin after all, forever backing on to each other. A pair of reliant yet paradoxically independent control freaks striking a preposterous balance in their mutual non-reciprocity, engulfed in their joint solitude.

Arthur is now scrutinising his face. Merlin senses the weight of the it without opening his eyes.

"You are better off without me." Merlin whispers. _And I would be better off without you_ , _eventually._

"I didn't say 'get the fuck away from me' back at the lake, did I? Then I won't say it now either."

"Well, you still have the chance."

"You are such a bloody selfish bastard, Merlin." Arthur bursts out laughing. He _actually_ laughed with his voice distorted, hysterical even, fluttering the fragments from Merlin's remote memories. Then the gaze calms, and falls on Merlin again.

"My life was where I wanted it - at least this was what I told myself - otherwise the shackles of being the sole heir of a kingdom would be unbearable. I was accustomed myself to not reach out for what was not on the criteria. I thought Guinevere, the round table and other things were proven to be some rebellious bones in me. It turned out I was always my father's son." Arthur speaks with the naked honesty, which Merlin finds a bit unreal.

They never opened up like this. They always masqueraded back then, even though neither of them truly knew about themselves to hide well. The frankness is so unfamiliar between them, embarrassingly uncanny. But again, basking in truth, death and time, they both changed regardless. The spell is on the verge.

"I didn't say those things to blame you, or that'd be pretty rich from me." Arthur lets out a bashful snort. "I've thought about these for years - lives - about why you did it. Why you never said anything, why you let me, how you could stand the things at all. I just want to say I am so, so sorry I didn't noticed - didn't want to see it - sooner, when we still had chance. I never really looked at you, really watched you, to get to know you. That you were in deep, so lonely, so helpless."

Merlin doesn't know what to say. He feels like in a fantasia besides his younger self - the one who set his foot upon the land of fate for the first time - sensitized the tragedy all over again in the furthest seat from the silver screen. He wants to break through the shade to the world he's been longing for, but all he can do is sitting there, watching the written tale drifting to another direction.

He forces a smile. "Seems the only thing we're good at is leaving each other in torment posing as solace."

"Then let's build something else."

"It's not that easy."

"It is that easy."

"How is it easy? I would never be secure enough to trust and you would never be sensitive enough to concern and I would retreat and you wouldn't go after and we would be like the old times again."

"See, we have acknowledged the problems."

"You can't expect the self-criticism to be the ultimate goal, Arthur! Conscious arseholes, but arseholes nonetheless, or even worse. There is no way into the future that can make sense of this."

"Look, I don't want to give up presence because of something hard to tell in the future."

"It's not hard to tell. This is what you're supposed to call easy."

"We were fooled by it once, if not more-"

"I'm not talking about the destiny, or maybe I am, it doesn't matter-"

"Do you still believe in this predestined-"

"It's us! You, me." 

As soon as the words flee out of his throat, Merlin realises how peculiar the two of them are now, bickering in the manner of a melodramatic gay couple on some tacky reality show as if they can just pretend the luckless romance was the only issue in desperate need of their attention. At the end of the day, the ill, hollow solicitude for the king's ambitions, the warlock's duty of care, the self-absorption and wilful negligence, the shame, the everlasting dialectical tension between the stoical beliefs in the summum bonum and the complexity of individuality, seems frivolous.

Arthur looks like he realises the same thing, lips curving into a crooked grin.

"Give us a little faith."

"How?" Merlin drawls, not bothering to school his pout. "How can you be so certain in spite of everything? And what's the point to keep me around now that you no longer need an arse-kisser?"

"Haven't you understood it now, Merlin? I don't care, not anymore." Arthur chuckles like he means it, like nothing else really matters to him - to them. "I don't care what you have done or will do, provided that you are here, my ever partner in crime." _We deserve each other_ , _like the two sides of the same coin_ , _the metal of eternal lunacy._

Merlin trembles in a whimsical thrill, before he mirrors Arthur's smile.

They said Arthur was the epitome of courage and iron will, as they called Merlin a lion-heart. They had no clue.

Only this simmering madness outlasts everything.

On the background, fireworks are set off into the darkness, one blooming followed by another, vivid and prodigious and a little enigmatic. The colourful lights pour over across the school yard to the old winding path leading to faraway, both dazzling and puzzling, like a promise, a reverie, or a tender nightmare, waiting for someone to fathom it out.

Considering the story starts like an averagely dumb rom-com, let's spare it an elegiac finale.

"Okay, c'mon." Merlin nods and leans in. "Make it worth, before we are doomed again."

He cups Arthur's face. And the song anew.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Added a piece of fanart here.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've seen my meta before, you prolly know I firmly consider Merlin an amoral sociopath who doesn't care anything but his boyfriend (in an Asian mom kind of way) once a collision of interests happens, and I love this morbid mentality of his so very much, while I find Arthur a bit vanilla in this craziness business - he is simply one of those hypocritical Brit colonizers like John Mill. But there is one thing about Arthur, which truly amazes me, that his performance in 513 at the lake is basically a combo of Michael Scott saying "I don't care if Ryan murdered his whole family" and Kelly Kapoor saying "You gave your baby an allergic reaction just to talk to me?" before furiously making out with Ryan Howard.
> 
> He doesn't care about what Merlin does to him, to his kingdom, or all the "good or evil" debate, not really, just like Merlin doesn't care about the Magical Lives Matter campaign or if Arthur has rights to make his own life choices. They are made for each other, a liar and a blind eye to the truths, an upholder and an arse-kisser who feeds beliefs. They deserve each other.
> 
> (Jonny Greenwood's "Phantom Thread III" is playing in my mind.)


End file.
